1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to magnetic heads for magnetic storage systems and more particularly to a magnetic tunnel transistor having a self-pinned ferromagnetic emitter providing an enhanced emitter-collector current transfer ratio.
2. Description of Related Art
Magnetic recording is a key and invaluable segment of the information-processing industry. While the basic principles are one hundred years old for early tape devices, and over forty years old for magnetic hard disk drives, an influx of technical innovations continues to extend the storage capacity and performance of magnetic recording products. For hard disk drives, the areal density or density of written data bits on the magnetic medium has increased by a factor of more than two million since the first disk drive was applied to data storage. Areal density continues to grow due to improvements in magnet recording heads, media, drive electronics, and mechanics.
Magnetic recording media increasingly decreases in size while increasing capacity. One reason for the increase capacity and reduced size is the giant magnetoresistive head (GMR). A GMR head includes a spin-valve film that provides a high magnetoresistance ratio (MR ratio) as compared with a conventional MR head. The MR ratio is the percentage change in resistance as an external magnetic field is switched between high and low values.
The spin-valve film, or spin-valve transistor, may also be used in other devices, such as magnetic memory (MRAM), to permit substantially infinite rewrite operations with low power consumption. However, even though spin-valve transistors are known to exhibit an extremely high MR ratio of several hundreds percent at certain temperatures, conventional spin-valve transistors have a defect in that a collector current (Ic) is extremely low. For example, the collector current (Ic) is about 10−4 of the emitter current (IE).
One reason for the low collector current level is because of electron scattering. The spin-valve transistor is designed to operate based on spin-dependent scattering of electrons. This means that the manner of electron scattering changes depending on whether the spin directions of electrons are parallel (i.e., spin direction of electrons are aligned with a spin direction of atoms in a magnetic layer) or anti-parallel in the two magnetic films of a spin-valve film included in a base of the spin-valve transistor. More specifically, when electrons flow through a conductor, about half are in a state called spin-down, and the others are in a spin-up state. Electrons with spins parallel to the spins of atoms on a magnetic layer of the spin-valve are less likely to be scattered than those with the opposite spin. Accordingly, in a spin-valve, due to the magnetic orientation of the layers, electrons are scattered and less current flows through each layer. However, a magnetic field, such as one from data encoded in a disk drive's recording medium, may reorient the spins on the atoms of the spin-valve to allow more current to pass through the spin-valve.
Also, in the spin-valve transistor, diffusive scattering occurs within a magnetic layer or at the interface between the magnetic layer and a nonmagnetic layer. Nevertheless, since the scattered electrons are incapable of flowing into the collector due to a strong diffraction effect at the interface between the base and the collector, the collector current is decreased.
Another reason for a small collector current is because of limited collection efficiency due to a small difference between two Schottky barrier heights. For example, a typical spin-valve transistor may include a FeCo/Au/Co spin-valve sandwiched between two Si wafers. Additionally, Pt layers are incorporated defining the emitter and collector Schottky diodes. The resulting Si—Pt Schottky barriers at emitter and collector sides have a barrier height of 0.85 eV and 0.81 eV, respectively (due to the different method of preparation of the Schottky diodes at emitter and collector side).
When the emitter Schottky barrier is forward biased, hot electrons are injected into the spin-valve. Hot electrons are electrons (i.e., carriers) with energies far above the Fermi level whereby the Fermi level is used to describe the highest of a collection of electron energy levels at a specified temperature. After the hot electrons traverse the spin-valve, these hot electrons are collected according to their energy and momentum at the Si—Pt collector Schottky barrier. Only a few injected hot electrons are typically collected. These few hot electrons have retained enough energy to surmount the Schottky barrier at the collector, which, as discussed above, is only slightly lower than the emitter barrier (i.e., 0.81 eV at the collector as compared to 0.85 eV at the emitter). The resulting low transfer ratio of collector current-to-emitter current (IC/IE) in the spin-valve transistor is undesirable in view of power consumption, operating speed, noise, etc.
An alternative sensing device is a magnetic tunnel transistor (MTT). A magnetic tunnel transistor (MTT) includes a ferromagnetic (FM) emitter, such as cobalt Iron (CoFe), a tunnel barrier, a single ultrathin FM base layer, and a collector such as GaAs. The emitter is pinned in the base by a thick adjacent anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) layer such as iridium manganese (IrMn) or platinum manganese (PtMn). When the emitter is pinned by the thick AMF pinning layer, electrons passing through the pinned emitter become polarized (i.e., orienting the direction of the spin of an electron either up or down) to increase the transfer ratio (IC/IE).
However, the thick AFM layer increases a series resistance in the emitter and hence decreases the current that can pass through the emitter to the collector. Also, when a magnetic tunnel transistor is operating at high temperatures, the manganese has a tendency to diffuse into the tunnel barrier layer and degrade the performance of the transistor by affecting the electrons traveling through the tunnel barrier layer. Further, AFM materials have a blocking temperature, and when an AFM material exceeds the blocking temperature (e.g., the MTT is operating at high temperatures) the AFM material loses its pinning and becomes disorientated. Hence, if the emitter becomes disorientated and the electrons flowing through the emitter are no longer polarized, the performance of the magnetic tunnel transistor is degraded.
It can be seen that there is a need for a self-pinned emitter for magnetic tunnel transistors for enhancing the emitter-collector current transfer ratio (IC/IE).
It can also be seen that there is a need for a method and apparatus for reducing the resistance caused by the thick anti-ferromagnetic layer in magnetic tunnel transistor films.